Ask HN: iPhones are mundane. What's the new grail?

1 pointsby TooMuchNickil y a 17 ans4 comments

I'm writing a comedy about startups, and I need to invent a feasible portable technology that could appear in a couple of years. But the iPhone made such a qualitative change to what people could do while standing on a sidewalk, all I can think of is a hands-free voice-activated search device. And that seems more like a ten-years-out technology.

To be honest, I'm probably gonna go with the above idea, but now I'm wondering: is there any handheld/wearable device that's so close we can taste it?

4 comments

seraph321il y a 17 ans

OLED screens that either fold, or roll up, could free us from the tiny-screen limitations of current mobile devices. These are supposedly very close to reality. The next step is lasers that just draw the image directly on the retina, but that's a bit further down the road.

gillsil y a 17 ans

This one is kind of cool: http://www.engr.washington.edu/facresearch/highlights/ee_con...

puzzle-outil y a 17 ans

plastic logic, paper replacement - http://www.plasticlogic.com/product.html

matthiasil y a 17 ans

the floppy dot. it just floats: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JILWKaQgUC0